Ted,
Lots of questions :-) Thanks for the interest ... I'll try to answer
them as best I can:
Is the advantage of BigFish over OFBiz - trunk primarily, or even
only, with regard to ecommerce?
NICK: BigFish is an extension of OFBiz. We re-use trunk code, the entity model, and the great service
layer. So, for example, we have a concept called "HEADER_LINKS" -- this is a piece of content
that manages the display of the very top of each eCommerce page (where your would normally have Store
locator, My Account etc.). This is managed in regular OFBiz "content" entities ... but more
easily maintained in the Admin Module (Content -> Site Info -> Header Links). So, you can see
that by this simple example that we're reusing a great feature of OFBiz, just putting a much more
manageable interface behind it. This is what BigFish is really all about -- reusing features of OFBiz,
having our own Admin Module, and giving control to the business users to manage their site.
If not, can you point to a document
that describes the differences between the two? (Some of those I am
interested in serving are not involved in ecommerce, as it is rather
hard to sell a shower or a new roof, over the web, but they need the
inventory, accounting and project management features).
NICK: right now it is very much focused on eCommerce and the customer facing aspect of
eCommerce. We are slowly exposing more of the backend ERP features into the BigFish Admin
Module (for example, we're recently exposed the order-status-change features in the Order
Management module). Key word here is "exposing", not re-writing or writing ...
reusing existing OFBiz services. Inventory will be exposed throughout this year.
Also, you had mentioned multi-site capability. Have you written up
instructions on how to deploy that?
NICK: this is a todo. You can see the existing Help at http://bigfish.solveda.com/help/index.htm -- the "HOW DO
I" and "GUIDES" have the most value. We are essentially using the PRODUCT_STORE feature and linking up
Product Catalogs to the Product-Store. All out-of-the-box stuff. There is a new entity in the data model called
X_CONTENT_XREF (we've prefixed our new entities with "X" to make it clearer) that maps various content to the
Product-Store (not supported out-of-the-box). We are working on another "extended site" for a client at which
point documentation will be available. It's actually not that difficult.
In connection to this, can a merchant readily
hire a graphics design person to modify the look and feel of the
ecommerce site? If so, what is involved? Would they simply make
their own CSS, and drop it in place?
NICK: yes, exactly. If you compare our two demo sites Fashion-House and
Electronic-Store there are basically very few differences: same BigFish
application; different database with different products; different CSS;
different content; different parameters. That's pretty much it. For the CSS
we've spent a lot of time generated markup that lends itself to being morphed
by CSS -- working out really nicely imo.
And also concernig this, what do
you do to support search engine optimization? After all, even a
pretty website is useless if people don't often find it.
NICK: mainly up to the client to provide good keywords. Some highlights: we use
sensible defaults for page titles and meta tags (all can be overridden in the
Admin Module). We have a sitemap.xml generator. We have friendly URL's built
into the solution.
One last
question I would ask about multisite BigFish is in fact related to
what I need to do to set up a multisite WordPress site (not obvious,
but not rocket science either), involves what I would need to do to
set up an ecommerce site that presents excerpts of digital products
(say essays available to subscribers to a WordPress site), and uses
them as ads for selling subscriptions to a wordpress site. I know
OFBiz already has support for digital products, but it isn't clear to
me how to configure a happy marriage of OFBiz/BigFish to WordPress.
NICK: not entirely sure to be honest, not sure I quite understand. The digital
content can be nicely accommodated but it would really depend on your detailed
requirements.
Finally, I saw, on your page for getting BigFish, instructions that
involve downloading an installation program. Do you also have it
acessable via subversion, or other version control system? Instead of
running an installer, I'd prefer to retrieve the codebase and build it
in the same way that I obtain and build OFBiz, if you support that?
(Or should I have read further in that documentation?)
NICK: I know we've talked about having a public read-only SVN available on the
site. I'll follow-up with the techs. Shouldn't be a problem.
Nick
On 5/7/2013 2:21 PM, Ted Byers wrote:
Hi Nick,
Impressive!
Is the advantage of BigFish over OFBiz - trunk primarily, or even
only, with regard to ecommerce? If not, can you point to a document
that describes the differences between the two? (Some of those I am
interested in serving are not involved in ecommerce, as it is rather
hard to sell a shower or a new roof, over the web, but they need the
inventory, accounting and project management features).
Also, you had mentioned multi-site capability. Have you written up
instructions on how to deploy that? I would assume, from what you
wrote, that it would be feasible to add more sites at any time after
the initial deployment. I would assume, further, that each site is
connected to a single party, though a given party could have multiple
sites, and that info from two sites in a single deployment will not
bleed into each other. In connection to this, can a merchant readily
hire a graphics design person to modify the look and feel of the
ecommerce site? If so, what is involved? Would they simply make
their own CSS, and drop it in place? That is what I did for my own
websites (developed in Perl): If one website operator wants a
different look and feel (even a very drastic change from my defaults),
they need only modify a CSS and drop it in place; and thus I'd assume
you did/support something similar. And also concernig this, what do
you do to support search engine optimization? After all, even a
pretty website is useless if people don't often find it. One last
question I would ask about multisite BigFish is in fact related to
what I need to do to set up a multisite WordPress site (not obvious,
but not rocket science either), involves what I would need to do to
set up an ecommerce site that presents excerpts of digital products
(say essays available to subscribers to a WordPress site), and uses
them as ads for selling subscriptions to a wordpress site. I know
OFBiz already has support for digital products, but it isn't clear to
me how to configure a happy marriage of OFBiz/BigFish to WordPress.
Finally, I saw, on your page for getting BigFish, instructions that
involve downloading an installation program. Do you also have it
acessable via subversion, or other version control system? Instead of
running an installer, I'd prefer to retrieve the codebase and build it
in the same way that I obtain and build OFBiz, if you support that?
(Or should I have read further in that documentation?)
Thanks
Ted
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Nick Rosser<nros...@solveda.com> wrote:
David,
In a nutshell it's an extension of OFBiz -- a fully functional eCommerce
solution.
Check out more details at http://bigfish.solveda.com
In particular, look at the demo instances.
Fashion House eCommerce:
http://bigfish.solveda.com:8082/online/shop/main
Fashion House Admin Module:
https://bigfish.solveda.com:8442/osafe-admin/control/main
(login is admin/ofbiz)
Best Regards,
*Nick Rosser*
nros...@solveda.com
Tel: 1.516.742.7888 x221
Cell: 1.516.901.1720
www.solveda.com
On 5/7/2013 1:06 PM, David Saenz wrote:
What is bigfish?
On 5/7/2013 10:13 AM, Nick Rosser wrote:
All,
(reposting as I needed to subscribe using our new domain)
I'm pleased to announce that the latest BigFish implementation is now
live.
Check out www.1800athlete.com
This is a great looking site and the creation of it is more interesting:
* a long time client of ours originally engaged with us to build
www.1800fishoil.com using the BigFish platform
* After the successful launch of this site they wanted to follow up
with the "1800athlete" site
* The new www.1800athlete.com site is built within their existing
BigFish architecture using the "multi site" capability
o single database to support both sites
o two instances of BigFish deployed, one for each site
o each with separate configurations, style sheets (CSS) and
separate product catalog
o no additional programming was required to build
www.1800athlete.com -- some visual design, product setup,
configuration and it's a go!
It's actually pretty impressive that they pulled it off ... with hardly
any support from us. And they are not a big tech company, just have very
good knowledge of the OFBiz entity model.
For more information about BigFish check out http://bigfish.solveda.com.
More updates coming soon to the site, with some very nice enhancements
and more success stories. Enjoy!
Best Regards,
*Nick Rosser*
nros...@solveda.com
Tel: 1.516.742.7888 x221
Cell: 1.516.901.1720
www.solveda.com
